Trump Contemplates Visiting DMZ with North Korea and South Korea

Trump speaks with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office Oct 10-2017

US President Donald Trump is thinking over on a visit to the DMZ which separates the two Koreas when he travels to South Korea in early November, according to a Defense Ministry source in Seoul.

Washington sent an early team to the DMZ to study the terrain in late September to see if this can be done in a safe manner, the source told Conspiracy Talk News agency, while a spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry, when asked by CTN News, made it quite clear that this information has not been confirmed officially, yet.

Among the possible places that President Donald Trump could visit, would be a village of the Panmunjom truce and a military observation post, both located within the tense DMZ.

The DMZ is a four-kilometer-wide strip of land that runs along the border between the two countries – technically still at war for more than 65 years – and the only point where troops from North and South come face to face.

However, Yonhap was quoted as saying that “Trump could choose to rule out the DMZ and visit other border location in that corridor such as the South Korean islands Baengnyeong or Yeonpyeong”, which suffered a North Korean gunnery strike in 2010 that left four dead.

Trump plans to tour Asia from November 3rd to 14th in which time he plans to visit Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and then possibly the Philippines.

His trip comes in the midst of a dialectical escalation between Pyongyang and the US president, who threatened the United Nations with destroying North Korea in response to its continuing weapons tests, including an underground nuclear test conducted on 3 September.

This situation has raised tension in the region to unprecedented levels since the end of the Korean War between (1950 and 1953).

The DMZ is, however, a point that has already been visited by American presidents and other top Washington officials in times of tension with Pyongyang.

The last to do so was Vice President Mike Pence, who was there in April, just a day after North Korea fired a ballistic missile.

Former President Barack Obama also visited back in 2012, as did George W. Bush in 2002, while former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter visited in (2015), Chuck Hagel (2013) and Robert Gates (2010), or even Trumps past competitor, Hillary Clinton, who came in 2010 as Secretary of State. Seems appropriate for Donald Trump to mark his spot in History also.